Too much of everything

Best movie of this year hands down!

A Masterpiece!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

With the weekend coming up,I decided to check what flicks were about to leave Netflix UK. Knowing him for his tough Horror/Thriller titles,I was surprised to spot a Sports Drama by William Friedkin,which led to me grabbing a pack of chips.The plot:Suffering a terrible season, legendary basketball coach Pete Bell feels the pressure to get the team back on track. Remembering how successful he has been in finding new comers,Bell looks towards the amateur league. As Bell signs on new talent,he learns that some of his best players have been cashing in backhanders.View on the film:Fuming by the sideline, Nick Nolte gives a powerhouse performance as Bell,who bites the arm of anyone who gets on his wrong side. Joined by the very good,more mellow J.T. Walsh, Mary McDonnell and Al Bundy, (playing a character with the very original name "Ed"!)Nolte gives Bell's marching orders to the team a warm howl,as Bell's sets his sights on the team leaping to victory.Shooting hoops as a writer,the screenplay by Ron Shelton scoops out most of the feel-good Sports movie clichés for a more earthy approach,with the issues the team face in backhanders and burnouts lingering as doubt in Bell for the whole season. Appearing to set up a cheerful final shot, Shelton instead slams the ball down for a poetic ending which gets to Bell's love of the game. Ducking and weaving in the game,director William Friedkin & cinematographer Tom Priestley Jr. gives the games a documentary closeness,via tightly held shots listening in on each team member helping to plan victory by chipping in.

Blue Chips gives us a view of high pressure college sports.It is a film about basketball that stars Nick Nolte as a college coach,Pete Bell,who was based loosely on Coach Bob Knight of Texas Tech,together with real- life basketball stars Shaquille O'Neal,Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway and Matt Nover as talented recruits.Blue Chips examines greed, cheating, and "winning at all costs" in the world of college basketball. Pete Bell is the stressed-out coach on the verge of his first losing season, who hits the road in search of new players not already signed by a bigger school. He finds three prospects: a precision Chicago shooter Butch McRae,a giant farm boy Ricky Roe and a talented troublemaker Neon.All three top prospects, wise to the ways of college basketball recruitment, make excessive financial and lifestyle demands before they can be persuaded to come to the school.Coach Bell, already haunted by accusations of underhanded dealings, doesn't want to dig himself a deeper hole but has no choice. The movie was started really well.Director William Friedkin and Writer Ron Shelton made an accurate depiction of the reality of college recruitment and the morality play that schools figure in on the college sports.There was also a story about how college players get involved with game fixing themselves.The acting was great on Nick Nolte as usual.While the performance of Shaq was good for his first screen appearance.But in the end,it "chickened out" and opted for an implausible conclusion and resolved for a Hollywood ending.But given its poor ending,Blue Chips is still an entertaining movie to watch especially for basketball fans.

I'm not a big sports movie guy, so I went into this not really expecting much other than killing 90 some minutes. I loved it! To see the struggle of a school and coach as they attempt to create a legit winning team in an environment of corruption was interesting. Then when they join that corruption it becomes exciting, you just know it's gonna blowup some time. Nick Nolte carries this film throughout it's entirety, and amazingly the real life players do a great job of acting and the rest of the cast is perfect. I love how they took real players and coaches and brought them into this film, it fits perfectly. The last 35 minutes of this film is brilliant. I've seen many people here talk of how bad this film is, I wonder if they just don't care about sports that much like myself, or have some underlying bias about admitting the corruption exists and always has in much of college sports. I don't care for sports! But I loved this film. The ratings this film gets on here really ticks me off, what is it, a 5.5 star average? I've learned one thing on here and other review sites, if you let others judge for you, you'll miss a lot of good movies.

Pete Bell is a college basketball coach. He's under pressure to win and is under pressure to get the players by any means necessary. How will he stand up to the pressure or will he give in to pressure?Basketball movies are often the `weak team overcomes' type and are not exactly great. Some are good (Hoosiers) but most are mildly distracting at best (The air up there), few reach the heights of Hoop Dreams. However Blue Chips is good because it manages to cast a critical eye over the real world of college ball – there are no small town winners, there are no `kids with hearts of gold' etc – instead it is as much a business as the NBA and the stakes are high to get the best players.Bell shows us how he must juggle doing what's right but also doing what the players want in order to get a winning team. This is refreshing – rather than yet another sports movie with the same old cliches. The down side is that it doesn't go far enough in my mind and it doesn't offer solutions.Nolte is good and is really convincing as a coach – even if he's a bit OTT at times on the sidelines. His support is great in the form of McDonnell, Walsh, Woodard and the real players of Shaq and Penny do OK. The cast is also filled out with plenty of coaches, commentators and such from real life – so there's plenty to see.Overall this is one of my favourite basketball movies simply because it tells it like it is – even if it does have it's weaknesses.